5 ms·

I will admit that I stopped reading the article because I think the article is completely mixing things up and honestly just did not feel like reading anymore o

• jklinger410 10mo ago
  > I think very few people actually consider it a single condition. To the point that most people that I know, including myself, say that we are "somewhere on the spectrum" or some variant of that. Couldn't disagree more. The "autism is my super power" movement is borderline offensive to people dealing with severe or low functioning autism. Dismissive, uninformed comment.
  • nerdjon 10mo ago
    I have never in my life used "autism is my super power" so please don't put words in my mouth. I will agree that it is offensive but that is very different from saying "somewhere on the spectrum" when I don't feel like having a more in dept conversation. And again my point is that contrary to what the article seems to be trying to make, no one really considers Autism a single thing.
    • nxor 10mo ago
      The article is about ASD.
    • dpark 10mo ago
      You obviously did not claim autism as a superpower. Still this “everyone is a bit autistic” stuff is kind of absurd. It diminishes the condition. > most people that I know, including myself, say that we are "somewhere on the spectrum" No one says “everyone I know is a bit paraplegic”, because that would be insane. Yet people glibly call themselves autistic as if having geeky hobbies or a job in software is the same as being diagnosable as having an autism spectrum disorder.
      • nerdjon 10mo ago
        > Still this “everyone is a bit autistic” stuff is kind of absurd. It diminishes the condition. Again nowhere am I saying that. Maybe I could have worded it much better but I never meant to imply, it happens that like myself a larger portion of the people I hang out with are diagnosed which for me works with just saying "most people" but I can see why that was not clear.
        • dpark 10mo ago
          Fine. You said most people you know.
      • mystraline 10mo ago
        [flagged]
    • jklinger410 10mo ago
      I'm not putting words in your mouth. What I'm saying is, if we had different names for different types of autism, saying "autism is my super power" wouldn't be such an issue. And if "no one considers autism a single thing" THEN WHAT IS EACH THING? lol
      • ceejayoz 10mo ago
  • squigz 10mo ago
    ??? In what way is GP being dismissive, or taking the "autism is my super power" position with that comment?
  • mystraline 10mo ago
    > Couldn't disagree more. The "autism is my super power" movement is borderline offensive to people dealing with severe or low functioning autism. I doubt those types are saying much of anything. Its more likely their caregivers. Again the old name for those of us who think its more a super power used to be called Aspergers syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome . And we got folded in to Autism Spectrum Disorder, as did a whole host of other diagnostics. And we have been found to be more truthful, better at focusing, can hyperfocus, notice more details than NT's, and plenty more. We're only a disease cause we're the minority.
    • computerthings 10mo ago
      [dead]
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    • kube-system 10mo ago
      Many with Aspergers take advantage of their strengths (as anyone does) but it is not without its difficulties
    • some_random 10mo ago
      >And we have been found to be more truthful, better at focusing, can hyperfocus, notice more details than NT's, and plenty more. We're only a disease cause we're the minority. Yeah and this is why Autism shouldn't be treated as a single condition, even if the cause is the same the outcome is meaningfully different than someone who cannot function.
    • alphager 10mo ago
      It's not a disease, it's a disability. As someone with a diagnosis, I would add several sensory issues (for me it's noises, multiple conversations at the same time, stickiness, physical contact, whole categories of food and several others) and several social issues to your list of superpowers. Seeing it purely as a positive is insultingly reductive. To be clear: I would not take a cure if it somehow got invented, but it /is/ limiting in a multitude of ways even in the best cases.
• bluGill 10mo ago
  The reason we say "somewhere on the spectrum" is there are a lot of high functioning people who have a few autism like symptoms that benefit from some autism treatments. You can change the name/diagnosis what you want, but in the end we need to get people the treatment they need.
  • cogman10 10mo ago
    That's the benefit of a broad diagnosis. Narrow diagnoses make it hard to get specific treatments for problems. That's my main concern about trying to split up autism. It's all well and good for study purposes, but for "can I get my insurance to pay for my kid's occupational therapy" purposes I'm really skittish about such a breakup. All the sudden my kid might have "omegaism" or whatever and boom, it's uncommon for them to need OT so insurance won't cover it.
    • phito 10mo ago
      That's exactly my issue with "autism" because it feels like lumping a bunch of things together just for the sake of simplifying health care. Meanwhile you have a bunch of people that have completely different symptoms, experiences and causes with the same diagnostic.
      • cogman10 10mo ago
        The vast amount of treatment for autism is therapies. It really doesn't matter if the underlying cause is very different in terms of treatment because a speech therapist works the same with a kid with autism as they do with a kid with down syndrome. If there were more pharmaceutical interventions then I might care a bit more. But there's just not. In terms of the research, the researchers already have tools to sort and filter individuals based on their specific set of symptoms. Just because 2 people share an autism diagnosis doesn't really impact the research. What objection do you have other than not liking that it's not a "pure" diagnosis?
      • mrguyorama 10mo ago
        It's lumping a bunch of things together because they are empirically linked together People with sensory issues often also have more cognitive rigidity for example. Autism, and many other psychological disorders, are quite literally just a lump of symptoms and presentations, because we do not have better options. Sure, it makes navigating american health insurance easier if you can just say "Autism" and get various treatments paid for, but very similar diagnostic criteria and definitions are used in countries with fully socialized medicine. Those people with those linked issues tend to benefit from similar treatment, and that's the entire point of a diagnostic criteria. All the complaints come from people who seem to just not like the vibe of that? Deal with it. Go fund more research into the heritability of neurodivergent pathologies if you want a blood test. Some day we WILL be able to separate "Autism" into very specific diseases with specific causes, and some of those causes will have a genetic test. Unless we kill the concept of medical research because we elected morons who tear apart our institutions. I have "Impaired vision", and I share that with people who are profoundly (but not totally) blind, and it does not matter that I can drive with glasses and they can't, and the name of that condition is not the important part. All this handwringing about "but but but my mildly autistic son is mostly functional and I'm sad that he has the same name of condition as someone who cannot be educated past a 3rd grade level" is stupid. It does not benefit anyone struggling with autism to complain about it. Are you aware that we have multiple medical conditions called "Palsy"s, and that they have drastically different causes and effects, such that my sister's Palsy which was caused by medical malpractice and prevented her from using her dominant hand in some cases is very different from my schoolmate's Palsy which left her wheelchair bound and requiring professional help day to day? They are both palsy because they are (partially) movement disorders stemming from nerve damage or dysfunction. The horror!
• stuffn 10mo ago
  > Enough so that some phrasing along the lines of "my tism is..." is somewhat commonplace. In the 1990s we drugged kids (especially young boys) who weren't able to sit still with ADHD medication. Every parent's kid suddenly had ADHD, people would talk about their quirky behavior as "oh its my ADHD". This generation it's autism, and it's likely over-diagnosed just as much as ADHD. You do it in your own post, attributing a defined, binary, thing as "I am somewhere on the spectrum". If anything, your own post demonstrates the anti-scientific (pop-sci) instagramification of mental illness. You either have some quantity of illness or you don't. You can't just ascribe some quirky, possibly somewhat anti-social, behavior as being on the spectrum. Sadly, this is often used like ADHD self-diagnoses to gain sympathy or social leeway. Much to the disservice of people suffering from the condition. It comes as no surprise that psychiatry, and medicine in general, is suffering from a massive reproducibility crisis. It's not anti-science to call into question the amount of bunk, p-hacked, corporate funded garbage coming out of even the highest tier of medical grade journals.
  • flatline 10mo ago
    I both agree and disagree with the over-diagnosis claim. Yes, everyone is suddenly autistic, which lessens the meaning or impact of the term. Also, the DSM 5 reclassifies a good portion of human behavior under the umbrella of ASD, so this is in part driven by the diagnostic model itself. We continue to see rising rates of severe autism in children, which are likely attributable to this reclassification as well as better common understanding of the diagnostic criteria. Presumably, just as many adults either qualify now or would have qualified as children. At the same time, there’s the neurodiversity movement that seeks to destigmatize and depathologize these diagnoses for both high functioning and more profoundly disabled individuals. Just because you don’t conform to the norm - and ASD is heavily defined in relation to deviation from an underspecified norm - does not make you “mentally ill.” So we have autism as an identity additional to a diagnosis, which I think can be really empowering for people, and also cause confusion and frustration for others. It’s a reclaiming of “disability” from the paternalistic and abusive medical and pseudoscientific practitioners that have been harming autistic people for decades. I also wish you were not being downvoted. You express some common sentiments and I think your comment adds to the conversation.
• tokai 10mo ago
  Understanding autism as a spectrum does not at all imply that its multiple conditions. Just one with varying severity.
  • phito 10mo ago
    It's not a one dimensional spectrum with just severity as variable. It's a multi dimensional spectrum, you could potentially assign a "condition" to each dimension (hypersensitivity, OCD, rigid thinking, non-verbality, ...)
  • Matticus_Rex 10mo ago
    But virtually everyone in the field does believe there are many different mechanisms behind autism, some of which have little-to-no overlap either in the mechanisms themselves or necessarily even in the presentation. Many scientists believe that one day we will likely be able to split off at least some of the undifferentiated mass of ASD into potentially completely unrelated disorders that may share a lot of aspects of presentation. For example, we may find out that one set of genes combined with cytokine storms in utero cause dysfunction in synaptic pruning, while another set of genes combined with gut dysbiosis may affect brain plasticity in the critical period of early childhood. Those would be two completely unrelated conditions, with overlapping symptoms for some (but not all) who have them.
• some_random 10mo ago
  I disagree completely, the discourse around RFK and "anti-science people" makes it extraordinarily clear that when most people hear "Autism Spectrum Disorder" they think exclusively of common, mild cases where the person has no serious issues existing in society and frequently benefits from their "disorder". They consider discussion of "curing" autism insulting, and challenge the idea that it's a read detriment at all. They do not for a moment think about the more severe cases that require people to have full time caretakers because they are unable to feed themselves. I can't read the article because of the paywall, but I assume that it is referring the fact that these two extremes need to be treated completely differently and even discussing ASD is made remarkably difficult because these extremes are the same diagnosis.
  • squigz 10mo ago
    I don't think it's safe to draw conclusions about what "most people" think based on the discourse around RFK and his nonsense.
    • some_random 10mo ago
      Yeah, that's why I'm drawing conclusions based on what how it's being discussed in real life, social media, this thread, etc.
  • mrguyorama 10mo ago
    > common, mild cases where the person has no serious issues existing in society and frequently benefits from their "disorder" This is not at all a thing. People with some mild neurodivergence sometimes being good at very specific tasks is not even in the same ballpark as "Benefits" There's no benefit to a brain that struggles in modern society. >but I assume that it is referring the fact that these two extremes need to be treated completely differently Except they don't. What is different is the intensity of the treatment. My girlfriend needs patience and a little therapy. Her sister needs intense forever therapy and infinite patience and a system that will allow her to live despite never being able to be a productive member of society. >They do not for a moment think about the more severe cases that require people to have full time caretakers because they are unable to feed themselves. They are regularly the parents of exactly those people and are sick and tired of you speaking for them and making their life harder. Those people who need fulltime caretakers can only pay for them through social security benefits, and guess who is trying to change that? >even discussing ASD is made remarkably difficult because these extremes are the same diagnosis. The reams of neurodivergent people I have interacted with in my life have never found issues with this, and have regularly been very willing to engage with the nuance of a poorly understood disorder which by definition has no single cause and might be several similar looking diseases because that's what the word disorder means in medical science The discourse around RFK is that morons with no experience, training, or even ability to read introductory material apparently should shut the fuck up, and let the adults work.
• squigz 10mo ago
  > To the point that most people that I know, including myself, say that we are "somewhere on the spectrum" or some variant of that. I'm not entirely sure why this comment is apparently so controversial, but I think people are confused by this. My reading of it was that you meant "most autistic people you know", and you yourself are. Maybe I'm wrong?
  • nerdjon 10mo ago
    That is exactly what I meant to say which is why I added an edit. I for sure could have phrased that a lot better. Now yes there are people who are undiagnosed for whatever reason (including some people I know that don't see the point after being diagnosed with ADHD, I know personally I had to have this conversation with my psychologist to determine if there was a point to actually do it at that point) that use that phrase and it gets a bit tricky. But nowhere am I trying to imply that *everyone* is saying this.